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NEW YORK—At a trendy entrepreneurial workspace in Brooklyn, Intel formally launched a new range of Xeon processors powered by its new Skylake-SP core. The new processors offer more cores and more performance than their predecessors, with a new mesh-based design to enable greater scaling within their multicore processors.

The new chips also bring with them a new set of precious metal-based branding, with four metals—Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum—used to denote processor capabilities. Unlike AMD's new Epyc platform, Intel is continuing to segment its features.

Xeon SP ("scalable platform") chips will have up to 28 cores and 56 threads. This high core count prompted Intel to move away from the ring-based design used in prior processors. The ring design arranged cores in one or two loops with core-to-core communication having to go around the ring, potentially requiring data to travel over a dozen or more hops to move between cores. With the new mesh design, the individual cores (along with memory controllers and I/O interfaces) are arranged in a 2D grid (4×4, 4×6, or 6×6, depending on the overall core count), allowing data to move between cores in many fewer hops. This design should help keep the communication latency between the cores low, and it's a key advantage over AMD's Infinity Fabric-based design, which can suffer very high latencies in a number of situations.

Skylake-SP also includes support for the AVX512 instruction set. This vector instruction set enables arithmetic to be performed on vectors of up to 16 single precision floating point numbers in a single operation, up from eight in AVX. The number of AVX registers has also been doubled. To make these wider vectors easier to program, AVX512 also includes complex masking capabilities. With this, an operation can, say, ignore a couple of elements in a vector without having to repack the vector to remove them. This makes complex operations with branches and conditions much easier to express in AVX512 than AVX.

Intel is also promoting security features of Xeon SP. With "Key Protection Technology," the processor can perform encryption and decryption operations without having to put the encryption keys in main system memory. This is designed to make those keys harder for malicious software to steal. Enabling this, Intel is also claiming substantially improved encryption performance.

Unlike the staggered rollouts of the past, Intel is releasing a full range of Xeon SP chips, supporting two, four, and eight or more sockets, together. As well as up to 28 cores, the chips will support up to 1.5TB of memory across six channels and 48 PCIe 3 lanes per processor. AMD is sure to make much hay of this: per chip, Epyc offers up to 32 cores, 2TB of memory across eight channels, and a total of 128 PCIe 3 lanes in both 1-socket and 2-socket systems. Intel's per-core performance is higher, and we'd expect most workloads to favor the Intel chips in spite of their core deficit. But for the most I/O and memory-intensive workloads, AMD may hold the advantage.

Platinum processors.

Intel

Gold processors.

Intel

Silver and Bronze processors.

Intel

Intel's segmentation is unrelenting, creating a product line-up that's substantially more complex than AMD's. That 1.5TB of memory, for example, is only supported on chips named with an "M" suffix; without that M, a Xeon SP is limited to 768GB. Want support for 2,666MHz memory? You'll need a Platinum or Gold part. Bronze is limited to 2,100MHz, Silver to 2,400MHz. Bronze, Silver, and 5000-series Gold only have a single unit for AVX512 fused multiply-accumulates, one of the most important arithmetic operations in vector processing. 6000-series Gold and all Platinum chips have two units, doubling their throughput. Bronze and Silver support up to two sockets; Gold takes that to four, but to go to eight you'll need Platinum. Select Gold and Platinum processors, denoted with an F suffix, also include an integrated OmniPath connector for additional high-speed I/O capabilities.

Anandtech has a full set of prices for the literally dozens of chips being launched. The number everyone will gawp at is that of the 8180M: 28 cores, 56 threads, a base clock speed of 2.5GHz, turboing to 3.8GHz, with 1.5TB memory support: those chips will come in at a cool $13,011 each. Sacrificing the large memory support drops the price to $10,009—that's a steep premium for the larger memory capacity.

While there are rumors that AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper processors caused Intel to shake up its desktop processor offerings—the 18-core Skylake-X parts, available later this year, are believed to be a direct response to AMD's 16-core Threadripper—the pricing and segmentation that Intel is using for Xeon SP suggests that Intel isn't yet feeling the heat from Epyc.

But Epyc 7601 costs less than half of Xeon 8176. Also power consumption of Xeon is much higher than Epyc and it does not correlate with the TDP numbers given by Intel.

The companies that buy these huge Xeon systems negotiate their own pricing. Think of the list price as Intel's first offer, not anywhere close to what most units will be sold for. Epyc will probably force Intel to reduce average selling price, possibly by a lot. Don't expect to see that reflected in list prices though.

So if Epyc is half the cost on the CPU side, then the 2-socket systems will still be more than competitive in just about everything other than AVX performance since you could spec a 2 socket AMD for a single socket Intel? Am I reading this right?and dual socket AMD should have more thread support in general at a similar price point?

Frankly, the value in AMD might just be in the time saved studying spec sheets. Just pick sockets and core counts, and then as much RAM as you can use.

Is the die as gigantic as the heat spreader would indicate? That's a whopper of a CPU there.

Outside of that, it's a good thing for Intel that they're the "industry standard" because anyone shopping purely on budget right now has to be aiming toward AMD powered systems. Still a big hill to climb given Intel's massive advantage in the arena, but man, that's a lot of heat and power usage.

These seem like a huge step backwards, from the E5-2600v4 to the Gold 6100 processors you're losing either cores or base clock, you can get an E5-269x processor with 3.2-3.6GHz base clock and 14-22 cores, the same core counts in the 6100 processors get you Way, Way slower base clocks (2.6-3.0). The pricing is similar so you're getting a lot less bang for your buck, which is especially brutal with the new per-core licensing for Windows 2016, it means you're going to end up with probably 20% higher overall costs for the same workload.

So if Epyc is half the cost on the CPU side, then the 2-socket systems will still be more than competitive in just about everything other than AVX performance since you could spec a 2 socket AMD for a single socket Intel? Am I reading this right?and dual socket AMD should have more thread support in general at a similar price point?

Frankly, the value in AMD might just be in the time saved studying spec sheets. Just pick sockets and core counts, and then as much RAM as you can use.

So this is what Apple is planning to put in the 18 Core iMac Pro. I didn't believe most publicaitons because Apple specifically called it a Xeon processor.

Now, imagine a Mac Pro with 26 cores! That's going to cost more than my whole photo kit - just for two of those processors with 1.5 TB RAM.

Apple will only configure the iMac Pro with up to 128 GB RAM, so the supported maximum for these Xeons are not an issue or deciding factor as any of them can support at least 6 times that. Whether or not that is a hardware limit or just the maximum Apple offers is anyone’s guess at this point, but as it appears that iMac Pro will not be particularly user-upgradebale even in terms of RAM, it may not matter.

So if Epyc is half the cost on the CPU side, then the 2-socket systems will still be more than competitive in just about everything other than AVX performance since you could spec a 2 socket AMD for a single socket Intel? Am I reading this right?and dual socket AMD should have more thread support in general at a similar price point?

Frankly, the value in AMD might just be in the time saved studying spec sheets. Just pick sockets and core counts, and then as much RAM as you can use.

What is the AMD price for an 8 socket system?

Given that even in dense configurations you'll see dual core blades rather than 8 core racks, I don't see AMD current lack of more than 2 CPU configurations being a massive problem. Dual socket covers a pretty big chunk of the server market. Intel can afford to go after more niche markets that AMD can't throw the R&D at.

Bronze isn't a precious metal.It's not even "a" single metal.It's an alloy.From Wikipedia:"Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12% tin and often with the addition of other metals (such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc) and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon."

But Epyc 7601 costs less than half of Xeon 8176. Also power consumption of Xeon is much higher than Epyc and it does not correlate with the TDP numbers given by Intel.

The companies that buy these huge Xeon systems negotiate their own pricing. Think of the list price as Intel's first offer, not anywhere close to what most units will be sold for. Epyc will probably force Intel to reduce average selling price, possibly by a lot. Don't expect to see that reflected in list prices though.

Agreed but it also applies for AMD Epyc pricing. Isn't it? AMD will be glad to reduce their pricing for large customers. They are selling Ryzen 1700 (8 core part) for less than $300 and an EPYC 7601 has 4 of those dies in a package. So AMD also has large scope for decreasing prices while still maintaining good margins.

Bronze isn't a precious metal.It's not even "a" single metal.It's an alloy.From Wikipedia:"Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12% tin and often with the addition of other metals (such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc) and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon."

Ok, copper. Still not a “precious” metal, but there is quite a bit of copper theft when the economy slumps, so I guess it is precious enough.

No wonder it costs a fortune...that's A LOT of real estate to potential get mucked up in manufacture. I think that's what I'd argue the advantage AMD has right now with their fairly modular design...."Perfect 8 core chip? That's a 1800x, whoops, this core is a mess, that's a 1600x" and so on. I'm sure the same will apply to the Epyc line. They can just churn out the same chip over and over and just bin them for cost effectiveness.

This sort of thing drives me batty, but apparently there are enough buyers who support this behavior to perpetuate it.

Personally, I'm getting really tired of weeding through tens/hundreds/thousands of SKUs for essentially the same products every time I shop, artificially segmented because marketing departments are populated by degenerate assholes. This is not 'choice' - it's a pointless gauntlet that adds friction to commerce and life in general.

This sort of thing drives me batty, but apparently there are enough buyers who support this behavior to perpetuate it.

Personally, I'm getting really tired of weeding through tens/hundreds/thousands of SKUs for essentially the same products every time I shop, artificially segmented because marketing departments are populated by degenerate assholes. This is not 'choice' - it's a pointless gauntlet that adds friction to commerce and life in general.

I guarantee the multitude of skus reflects bad yields and binning far more than it does market need. Every random SKU represents a failed full yield chip in some capacity.

I guarantee the multitude of skus reflects bad yields and binning far more than it does market need. Every random SKU represents a failed full yield chip in some capacity.

I know about binning, but in many cases Intel (and others) artificially remove features that cost no more to implement (the engineering has already been done) for the sake of market segmentation. Or other times manufacturers will include features A, B, and D in one SKU and A, C, and E in another, and then A, B, and E, etc. No functional reason - just pure marketing.

Which is certainly their right, but when deciding whether to populate their catalog with 5 items or 25 items of essentially the same product (Hello, Samsung), that's the pain that I'm talking about. Consolidate everything to Good, Better, and Best when possible and gun for volume on each.

Hmm, well it will be interesting and quite possibly entertaining to watch these two slug it out.

Of course, I must caution that we in the cheap seats can't toss the win to either side. If you are running a server (of significance, not my basement file server) than due diligence means establishing which benchmarks map to your data sets. And, of course, YMMV.

Still, it will be fun. And, as many of you have said, finally AMD is an actual contender once more.

It'll be interesting to see the broader application of AVX512 (Skylake-SP) optimizations, which are assuredly phenomenal in some cases, but as anandtech notes:

De Galas/Cuttress wrote:

For the rest of us mere mortals, it will take a while before compilers will be capable of producing AVX-512 code that is actually faster than the current AVX binaries. And when they do, the result will be probably be limited, as compilers still have trouble vectorizing code from scratch. Meanwhile it is important to note that even in the best-case scenario, some of the performance advantage will be negated by the significantly lower clock speeds (base and turbo) that Intel's AVX-512 units run at due to the sheer power demands

It's nice to see we now have a horserace at both the consumer and server level; hopefully Zen APUs are similarly compelling. Though AMD is 'limited' to dual socket, that's up to 64 beefy cores and 128 threads in two sockets with 8 RAM channels and massive PCIe bandwidth.

Have we seen a picture of how the little edge connector is attached to the system?

Normally those are shoved into an appropriate slot; but you can't really move the CPU that way when it goes straight down into its socket. Is the slot slightly movable? Something other than the usual edge connector arrangement?

It'll be interesting to see the broader application of AVX512 (Skylake-SP) optimizations, which are assuredly phenomenal in some cases, but as anandtech notes:

De Galas/Cuttress wrote:

For the rest of us mere mortals, it will take a while before compilers will be capable of producing AVX-512 code that is actually faster than the current AVX binaries. And when they do, the result will be probably be limited, as compilers still have trouble vectorizing code from scratch. Meanwhile it is important to note that even in the best-case scenario, some of the performance advantage will be negated by the significantly lower clock speeds (base and turbo) that Intel's AVX-512 units run at due to the sheer power demands

It's nice to see we now have a horserace at both the consumer and server level; hopefully Zen APUs are similarly compelling. Though AMD is 'limited' to dual socket, that's up to 64 beefy cores and 128 threads in two sockets with 8 RAM channels and massive PCIe bandwidth.

From a consumer standpoint....if they can release a Ryzen APU with similar performance to the Xbox One X on-board GPU.....look out. That'll be a killer-app in the consumer gaming world. A 4/8 Ryzen core with truly solid on-board graphics in a $300 or so package would be the bees knees.